Mueller speaks. Updating coverage: At 10 a.m. Central time (right around Chicago Public Square’s email dispatch deadline)—amid calls he testify before Congress—special counsel Robert Mueller was set to make his first public statement on his investigation into Russian interference …
■ See it happen—live or later—here.
■ Two Chicago congressmen have joined the ranks of those calling for President Trump’s impeachment.
■ The first Republican congressman to call for impeachment has pissed off his district’s Trump supporters …
■ … but hundreds of Republicans, Democrats and independents cheered him at a town hall session yesterday.
Showtime. Lori Lightfoot takes the gavel for her first full City Council meeting this morning (also around 10 a.m.), and you can watch along on the internet here.
■ The early line has been that she’ll get what she wants from aldermen in terms of her committee restructuring and leadership …
■ … including internet livestreaming of committee meetings …
■ … but she told the City Club yesterday she’s not feeling the “honeymoon.”
■ If you hear the words “Council Wars” as Lightfoot’s administration takes shape, remember who coined that phrase.
Lightfoot’s schools plan. The Sun-Times quotes unnamed sources as saying the mayor has picked former City Clerk and mayoral candidate Miguel del Valle to lead an overhauled school board.
■ Eleven years ago, 22 kids from a struggling suburb got free rides to college. It didn’t end all that well.
■ The University of Illinois at Chicago is offering in-state tuition to students from any of the hundreds of tribal nations recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
500 tornadoes. That’s how many have been reported in the U.S. so far in May, making this the fourth worst month on record for twisters.
■ Updating coverage: A flock of tornadoes ravaged the Kansas City region yesterday. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ CNN: Why congressional Republicans are blocking disaster aid.
‘If you think this bill goes too far, who do you want to send to prison?’ Democratic Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch was among those voting to send the Illinois Senate a bill to expand and protect the state’s abortion rights.
■ The troglodytic Thomas More Society warns the bill would make Illinois the “abortion capital of America.”
■ Before the week’s up, Missouri could become the first state in the nation without an abortion clinic since 1973’s Roe v. Wade ruling.
■ Journalist Lauren Holter says the newly upheld Indiana law requiring the burial of fetuses after abortion “will make the medical procedure much more expensive. … Like every other anti-abortion law, this is about limiting access.”
■ Netflix and the ACLU are teaming up to oppose Georgia’s draconian anti-abortion law.
■ The Washington Post on Supreme Court tension: “Sniping between Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg foreshadows the abortion fights to come.”
‘If a tree gets in the way … it slows down considerably.’ The Tribune’s Ally Marotti takes the vaunted 5G cellular network for a trial run and finds it’s not all that.
■ Beware AT&T’s phony launch of “5GE” service …
■ … which Trevor Noah mocked on The Daily Show last week.
■ Do you use the
Trebek’s new hope. Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek says doctors report “mind-boggling” progress in treatment of his stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
■ Jeopardy! champ and Naperville native James Holzhauer has notched his 29th straight win.
■ A 34-year veteran of Chicago’s all-news WBBM Newsradio is calling it quits.
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